Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
“Meditation on Red”, text of the poem, annotations, and commentary are on (or to be added) the following pages and online: http://www.dloc.com/AA00061848
Audio: forthcoming
Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
MEDITATION ON RED
“I feel I've been here for . . . centuries. Even this winter dates from the dark ages.” – Jean Rhys, letter from Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon
1
1. You, voyager 2. in the dark 3. landlocked 4. at Land Boat Bungalows no. 6 5. never saw this 6. green 7. wide 8. as the sea 9. green 10. limitless 11. the rain 12. that greeted your arrival 13. at Cheriton Fitzpaine
14. You (destiny: 15. storm-tossed) 16. never saw 17. the rolling downs 18. patchworked 19. in emerald, peridot 20. mint, celadon 21. never saw 22. sheep 23. tossed here and there 24. like foam 25. for decoration 26. on this green 27. quilt 28. of Devon.
29. Arrival 30. at Land Boat Bungalows 31. at flood time 32. never rid you of 33. the fear of being 34. the fear of being left 35. the fear of being left 36. high and dry 37. So at no. 6 38. there was 39. perpetual flooding 40. so much drink Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
41. flowing 42. so much tears 43. so much 44. on the edge of 45. but never quite 46. under 47. that quilted 48. green 49. comforter 50. wishing for 51. blue skies 52. wanting 53. but never quite 54. believing 55. your craft 56. to be 57. worthy.
58. Such 59. disappointing 60. harbour 61. (again).
62. “It is very cold,” you write 63. “It gets dark early 64. One meets dark figures . . . 65. frost and ice are everywhere.”
66. You still had 67. this burning 68. desire 69. to set sail 70. even though 71. (now and always) 72. and despite 73. what long ago 74. the fortune teller 75. said – 76. “I see something great 77. in your hand, something noble” – 78. you were 79. rudderless.
80. Marooned 81. in the grey 82. you decided 83. to garden. Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
84. Since 85. they called you 86. witch 87. you would 88. conjure up 89. bright
90. flowers 91. spelling 92. each other 93. all year.
94. In spring 95. (you wrote) 96. you planted seeds. 97. “I wanted heaps of poppies . . .
98. Not one came up.”
99. Instead 100. (you wrote) 101. there was sometimes 102. “blue murder 103. in my wicked heart”
104. and a red dress 105. in your closet 106. a “Christmas cracker dress” 107. – the whole village knew and whispered 108. waiting for another explosion
109. (like that 110. which long ago 111. came 112. from the 113. attic).
114. But you 115. in your housecoat 116. frayed 117. round the edges 118. like you Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
119. red
120. like your rages 121. (soothed 122. with a box 123. of pills, red 124. what else?) 125. found 126. there were 127. occasional 128. red-letter days: 129. a dream of red 130. and gilt 131. a dream of 132. getting your face 133. lifted 134. buying 135. a bright red wig 136. to shock 137. and a purple dress 138. with pearls 139. to hoist 140. your spirits 141. (when you voyaged 142. out).
143. Meantime each day 144. you made up 145. your old face 146. carefully 147. for the village 148. children 149. making faces 150. at you 151. who knew 152. how to spell
153. little knowing 154. in that grey mist 155. hanging over 156. Cheriton Fitzpaine 157. how cunningly 158. you masked 159. your pain 160. how carefully 161. you honed 162. your craft 163. how tightly Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
164. you held 165. your pen 166. how brilliantly 167. you planned 168. to write 169. (though they 170. no doubt 171. heard it 172. as “ride”) 173. across that 174. Wide Sargasso.
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175. Now in the time 176. of that incredible green 177. again 178. in spring 179. in rain 180. I come 181. to the churchyard 182. at Cheriton Fitzpaine 183. Devon 184. knowing 185. you're there 186. Lady 187. sleeping it off 188. under that dark 189. grey 190. stone 191. though it says 192. in a categorical 193. tone:
194. HERE LIE BURIED THE ASHES 195. OF MY BELOVED MOTHER 196. JEAN RHYS, C.B.E., NOVELIST 197. (ELLA GWENDOLEN HAMER) 198. BORN 199. DOMINICA AUGUST 24TH 1890 200. DIED 201. EXETER MAY 14TH 1979.
202. “GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT.”
203. I've come to 204. wake you Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
205. with spring flowers 206. (the ones 207. you had no 208. luck with 209. growing) 210. – snowdrops 211. daffodils 212. narcissus
213. knowing 214. you would prefer 215. a blanket 216. of red 217. – flame of the forest 218. hibiscus 219. heliconia 220. poinsettia 221. firecracker 222. bougainvillea –
223. for of 224. Mr Rochester's 225. first wife 226. you said:
227. “She is cold 228. – and fire 229. is the only warmth 230. she knows 231. in England.”
232. I apologize.
233. Right now 234. I'm as divided 235. as you were 236. by that sea.
237. But I'll 238. be able to 239. find my way 240. home again
241. for that craft Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
242. you launched 243. is so seaworthy 244. tighter 245. than you'd ever been 246. dark voyagers like me 247. can feel free 248. to sail.
249. That fire 250. you lit 251. our beacon 252. to safe harbour 253. in the islands.
254. I'd like to take 255. with me 256. a picture
257. and though 258. you were never one 259. for photographs 260. or symmetry 261. (except 262. in fiction) 263. it's to be taken 264. by the woman 265. who typed 266. your last 267. book.
268. And though 269. I know you hate 270. to be disturbed 271. just 272. when you've finally 273. settled 274. down 275. I beg you 276. to tear yourself
277. away 278. from that grey stone 279. in the churchyard 280. at Cheriton Fitzpaine 281. for just one moment 282. and – Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
283. Look, 284. Miss Rhys:
285. No rain!
286. – and see 287. Mary Stephenson 288. standing there 289. at her ease 290. waiting 291. to say 292. to us both: 293. “Smile please.”
Annotations to the Poem
(prepared by Olive Senior)
Note: The meditation is based on a visit the poet made to the grave of the Dominican-born writer Jean Rhys (1890-1979), author of Wide Sargasso Sea, among other books. Rhys spent her final years in the village of Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon, England, where she is buried. Her address was No. 6 Land Boat Bungalows. The poem addresses Rhys and makes references to the titles of many of her books.
210-212] snowdrops, daffodils, narcissus: English spring flowers.
217-222] flame of the forest (Spathodea campanulata); hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis); heliconia (Heliconia bihai.); poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima); firecracker (Russelia equisetiformis)—also called Fountain Bush and Coral Bush; bougainvillea (Bougainvillea glabra): all tropical flowers with red blooms.
Commentary
Written by Jordan Stouck, University of British Columbia (Okanagan) and Hyacinth Simpson, Ryerson University.
In “Meditation on Red,” the speaker or poetic persona, who self identifies as a writer, directly addresses deceased author Jean Rhys. In the process of recalling some of the highs, lows, and literary achievements in Rhys’s life and writing career, the speaker sees a reflection of her poetic self. But even though it is not an exact reflection (Rhys’s life was filled with upheavals and personal trauma, for example) the speaker acknowledges Rhys as a literary influence. Both the flowers that the speaker brings to Rhys’s grave and the poem itself are a tribute to the Dominican-born writer. In the poem, one of the important genealogical links between the speaker and Rhys is their shared experience as migrants—of being Caribbean writers living away Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
from and writing about the place of their birth. For example, in lines 234-236, the poetic persona admits to feeling “as divided” as Rhys did “by that sea.” “That sea”—the Sargassos Sea1which appears in the title of what is perhaps Rhys’s most famous work—is at the centre of the poem’s network of water-based imagery. This network of images allows Senior to craft a poem that highlight’s Rhys’s experience as voyager and outsider. This theme, in part, accounts for the inclusion of “Meditation on Red” among the poems in the “Travellers’ Tale” section of Gardening in the Tropics.
As a voyager, Rhys spent much of her adult life criss-crossing Europe (mostly Paris and Vienna) and the UK, but she is often described as a Creole writer2. Her Creole designation is in part because she was born in colonial Dominica to a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother whose British family had lived in the colony for several generations. Rhys is considered a Creole or Caribbean writer because her Dominican childhood held great importance for her (she left Dominica for England when she was seventeen) and informed many of her novels and short stories. Importantly, Rhys’s work has been recognized by critics as having made a key contribution to the development of Caribbean writing3, and this is one sense in which Olive Senior draws on Rhys’s fiction and biography in “Meditation on Red.” Not surprisingly, then, the poetic persona says to Rhys: that craft you launched is so seaworthy . . . dark voyagers like me can feel free to sail. (lines 241-243; 246-248)
While the speaker—whom Senior indicates is an authorial persona (On Gardens and Gardening)—recognizes that there are racial (hence “dark voyagers/ like me”) and other differences between them that perhaps inform their writing lives, she clearly sees Rhys as a literary foremother. The poem itself is a testament to Rhys’s influence since the poetic persona draws directly from Rhys’s books, letters, and unfinished autobiography for content; and the clever wordplay and double meanings that give the poem much of its emotional depth derive from the reader’s and speaker’s shared knowledge of the details of Rhys’s life and work.
The emotional tone of Rhys’s life during the years in Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon, when she struggled to complete Wide Sargasso Sea in what she felt was increasingly becoming a hostile physical and social environment is effectively captured in the first part of the poem. Yet the reader hears Rhys’s voice directly only at those points in the poem where quotes from her letters are provided. That is because in Part 1 Rhys’s experiences and viewpoint are filtered through the perspective of the poetic persona who employs colour symbolism and imagery that capture the turbulence and sense of loss, but also the tenacity and determination, of Rhys’s Devon years. In Part 2, the narrative focus shifts, although it is still the same poetic persona who is speaking. In Part 2, the poetic persona provides details of her own visit to Cheriton Fitzpaine years after Rhys’s death and uses the occasion to confirm the latter’s status among Caribbean writers. In the process, the poetic persona counterbalances the sadness and gloom that pervade Part 1 by affirming—again through colour symbolism and imagery that resonate with those employed in Part 1— Rhys’s final triumph, even in death, over all the writerly and personal challenges she faced. The interplay between the symbols, images, sentiments, and tones of Part 1 and Part 2 helps facilitate one author’s expression of allegiance to, quiet reflection on, and appreciation of another author’s work and craft. Hence the use of the word “meditation” in the title as the poem Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
is an actual contemplation on what it means to be a writer—and particularly a writer from the Caribbean who lives and writes away from home.
In her interview with Hyacinth Simpson, Olive Senior recalls reading “everything [she] could find by and about Jean Rhys” as a way of developing her vocabulary for the poem (On Gardens and Gardening). The poem contains many allusions to, and sometimes quotes directly from, letters Rhys wrote to various people when she lived in the village of Cheriton Fitzpaine between 1960 and the late 1970s. For example, the poem begins with references to the dampness of the Devonshire countryside. In the opening stanzas, the poetic persona echoes Rhys’s initial impressions of the place when she speaks of the “limitless …rain” (lines 10-11) and “perpetual flooding” (line 39) at Land Boat Bungalows, the aptly named group of cottages where Rhys lived in Cheriton Fitzpaine. In a letter to her daughter, Maryvonne, upon first arriving in the village Rhys wrote: “Above all Rain. It has hardly stopped since we came! (Wyndham and Melly 195). Rhys also complained about “bad floods” caused by the River Exeter overflowing its boundaries after months of unceasing rainfall (Wyndham and Melly 196). Alongside the rain, tears, drink/ing, and sailing are among other aqueous references in the poem, and together these form a network of water imagery that the poet (both Senior and her authorial persona) uses to underscore the sense of loss, overwhelm, and helplessness that dogged Rhys in the final decades of her life. Rhys’s letters indicate that she was often felt like she was drowning in depression brought on by having very little money, her own and her third husband’s illnesses, and the copious amounts of alcohol that she consumed. She was, indeed, often in “fear of being left/ high and dry” (lines 35-36) by family, friends, and the literary world. In a similar vein, the sense of steering a boat, often through threatening waters, becomes a recurring image in the poem for the art of writing, a “craft” (connoting both skill and vessel) (lines 55, 162, 241) that Rhys struggled with. But, as the poetic persona notes, despite her struggles, Rhys was able to launch a seaworthy craft that served both her and the writers she has influenced.
Colour symbolism is the main literary device employed to create and extend meaning in the poem. Like "Meditation on Yellow", "Meditation on Red" is a colour poem because a significant portion of what it means—that is, the ideas and emotions it conveys—is realised through associations made with the colour red. In On Gardens and Gardening, Senior indicates that she uses red to structure the poem because it is the colour “most associated with [Rhys].” As with the water imagery, the poem mines Rhys’s fiction (particularly Wide Sargasso Sea) and letters for material through which such associations are made. Red features largely in the poem because Rhys seemed to have favoured the colour. She wore and surrounded herself with it whenever she wanted to bring some unaccustomed cheer into her life. When she first moved into No. 6 Land Boat Bungalows, Rhys told her daughter that “[the cottage] is already very comfortable–but I will make it glitter a bit, for it can be dark in the rain. It needs Red. A lot” (Wyndham and Melly 195). In line 106, the poetic persona recalls the red “Christmas cracker dress” that Rhys wrote about in a letter to her daughter in December 1961 (Wyndham and Melly 201). Rhys’s purchase of the dress (although she ended up not wearing it) apparently defied the social norms of Devon society because it led to gossip among her neighbours (Wyndham and Melly 209). The planting of poppies, the consumption of red pills, the wearing of a red wig, and the use of red and gilt décor, all mentioned in Rhys’s letters between 1960 and 1963, help to further develop the poem’s colour symbolism and the use of red as Rhys’s identifying colour.
The narrow-mindedness of Devon society hinted at in the reactions to the red dress eventually becomes a more dominant theme in Rhys’s letters from 1963 on. She claimed on more than one occasion that her neighbours accused her of being a witch; and she wrote to Selma Vaz Dias to say that her neighbours distrusted her because she was a writer, an occupation deemed suspect by the illiterate villagers (Wyndham and Melly 241). Senior carefully choses words such as Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
“spell/ing,” “conjure,” “craft” and “ride” (rather than, as the poem notes, “write”) that allude to both Rhys’s supposed witchcraft and to her vocation as a writer. Senior’s diction in “Mediation in Red” is thus, like the poem’s perspective, dual, as it draws out Rhys’s meanings as well as those of the poetic persona.
The poem also makes numerous references to Rhys’s published novels and short stories. Voyage in the Dark was the first novel that Rhys wrote (although it was her fourth published work), and Senior plays with that title in lines 1-2, 141-142, and 246. Wide Sargasso Sea is also referenced. The lines “waiting for another explosion/ (like that/ which long ago/ came/ from the/ attic)” (108-113) refer to the first Mrs. Rochester, Rhys’s heroine in Wide Sargasso Sea who sets the house on fire after years of being imprisoned in the attic by her husband. Rhys’s heroine is inspired to burn the house down after seeing a red dress hanging in the attic closet, which makes the allusions to red—and to Rhys’s own red dress—discussed above even more nuanced. Later on, the poem again makes reference to Wide Sargasso Sea by quoting a sentence Rhys wrote about the novel’s ending in a letter to Vaz Dias in 1958: “She [the first Mrs. Rochester] is cold– and fire is the only warmth she knows in England” (Wyndham and Melly 157). The second part of Senior’s poem makes poignant and elegiac references to lesser known works by Rhys. Sleep it Off, Lady, alluded to in lines 186-187 of the poem, is the title of Rhys’s last published short story collection. Good Morning, Midnight (line 202), which is inscribed on Rhys’s tombstone, is the title of her fourth novel. “Smile Please,” the final words of the poem, is the title of Rhys’s posthumous memoir.
Furthermore, the many allusions to Rhys’s work in the poem draw attention to other layers of intertextuality. For example, Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, “Good Morning, Midnight” is the title of a poem by Emily Dickinson, and The Voyage Out was a novel by Virginia Woolf. Senior’s poetic persona explicitly recalls the latter in the phrase “when you voyaged out” (lines 141-142). Intertextuality, as Tobias Doring points out, allows multiple perspectives to exist within a work and offers a “network of exchange and circulation” (8) rather than a single authorial perspective. In the references to Rhys’s letters and books, Senior employs Rhys’s own cross-textual approach to facilitate a dialogue between past and current authors and texts. This intertextuality allows Senior to give validity to Rhys’s perspective while also asserting the poetic persona’s point of view. Rhys’s rewriting of Brontë’s Jane Eyre was a clear acknowledgement of the literary influence of the English novel, even as Wide Sargasso Sea was written as a counter narrative to, as Gayatri Spivak has famously argued, assert “the interest of the white Creole” (253). In a similar manner, Senior pays tribute to Rhys’s oeuvre while also affirming her poetic persona’s (and perhaps her own) perspective as a differently-positioned, contemporary Caribbean writer.
But the poetic persona does not share Rhys’s sense of alienation, even though they are both far away from home. True, the trope of the voyage used throughout the poem underscores their positioning as diasporic writers from the Caribbean. As well, not only does the image of steering a boat reference the craft of writing, as mentioned above, but the idea of traversing the Sargasso Sea, of voyaging out, of crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic is crucial to the experiences of alienation and belonging that the poem explores. Atlantic passages are fraught due to histories of colonialism and slavery, and Rhys’s voyage to and eventual marooning in England resulted in an ongoing sense of alienation that even her intelligence and writing (“crafts” both) could not overcome. But Senior’s poetic persona has found a means to belong— a “beacon/ to safe harbour/ in the islands” (lines 251-253)—seemingly through her mediation on Rhys’s life and work. Although “divided,” as Rhys was, “by that sea” (lines 234-236), Senior’s poetic persona remains confident and hopeful in her ability to speak and move between places. As Gyllian Phillips has noted, the speaker of the poem enacts a “rich transformation,” undoing “the binaries Poems from Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, www.dloc.com/olivesenior “Meditation on Red”: http://www.dloc.com/l/AA00061848/
that would appear to inform her relationship with Rhys”—namely the binaries of race, age, and colonial history (202). At the end of the poem, it seems that Senior’s speaker breathes new life into Rhys. Imagining that Rhys wakes up from her deathly sleep to smile in the photograph with her, Senior’s speaker jubilantly observes that the rain Rhys so despised has stopped in honour of the moment. That final image of the two writers symmetrically arranged in the frame appears to be a homecoming for both of them; and it effects a seamless transition between past and contemporary traditions of Caribbean writing.
Notes 1 Named after the sargassum seaweed growing there, the Sargasso Sea is an area of the North Atlantic Ocean noted for its strong currents. It must be crossed in the passage between England and the Caribbean. 2 The term “creole,” which gained currency in the 18th and 19th centuries, has been used to refer to anyone born or long resident in the Caribbean. It has also been used to refer to people of mixed heritage, for whom other terms such as “brown” and “mulatto” have been employed. As well, “creole” is used in Caribbean literary and cultural criticism to refer to the unique historical conditions of slavery and plantation society under which several ethnicities and nationalities (African, British, Chinese, Indian, etc.) came into contact. Several critics have also specifically identified Rhys as a creole writer. See, for example, Judith Raiskin’s Snow on the Canefields; Women’s Writing and Creole Subjectivity in which the author includes Rhys among a group of four British-connected creoles she discusses. 3 After Rhys’s final novel Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966, it –and Rhys—were claimed by Caribbean literary critics as belonging to the Anglophone Caribbean (or West Indian) literary tradition. For example, in 1968, Wally Look Lai wrote; “[T]here can be little doubt that a serious reading will reveal Wide Sargasso Sea to be one of the genuine masterpieces of West Indian fiction” (38). John Hearne argued that Wide Sargasso Sea was “the touchstone against which to assay West Indian fiction before and after it” (323-324), while Kenneth Ramchand hailed Rhys’s reemergence and the novel’s publication as “the most spectacular turn of fortune” (xi) for west Indian literature.
Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Cornhill, UK: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1847. Print.
Doring, Tobias. Caribbean-English Passages: Intertextuality in a Postcolonial Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Hearne, John. "The Wide Sargasso Sea: A West Indian Reflection." Cornhill Magazine 1080 (Summer 1974): 323-333. Print.
Look Lai, Wally. "The Road to Thornfield Hall: An Analysis of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea." New Beacon Review.Ed. John La Rose. London: New Beacon Books Ltd., 1968. Print.
Lonsdale, Thorunn. "Literary Foremother: Jean Rhys's Sleep it Off, Lady and Two Jamaican Poems." Telling Stories: Postcolonial Short Fiction in English.Ed. Jacqueline Bardolph. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. 145-155. Print.
On Gardens and Gardening. Prod. Hyacinth M. Simpson. Perf. Olive Senior. Toronto: Ryerson University, 2007. DVD.
Phillips, Gyllian. "Personal and Textual Geographies in Olive Senior's Literary Relationship with Jean Rhys."Journal of Caribbean Literatures 3.3 (1997): 199-206. Print.
Raiskin, Juditch. Snow on the Canefields; Women's Writing and Creole Subjectivity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.